On Friday, a cloud outage affected multiple major websites, including Apple Pay, DoorDash, Reddit, and Hulu, with issues beginning around 6:40am ET, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) later confirming connectivity problems in its US-West-2 region in Oregon, which provides computing power and online infrastructure to countless websites and apps. The disruption, which possibly left millions of users without access to online services, was resolved shortly after 9am ET, according to AWS.

Cloud Outage Causes and Effects

The outage affected seven AWS services, including AWS Direct Connect, Global Accelerator, Internet Connectivity, IoT Core, Amazon API Gateway, Elastic Compute Cloud, and Elastic Container Service, with problems involving Amazon EC2, the service that provides virtual servers for websites and applications, and AWS's US-West-2 region in Oregon. According to Downdetector, which monitors online outages, 30 percent of users reported problems with AWS, citing issues involving Amazon EC2, while 29 percent reported problems with AWS's US-West-2 region.

The widespread disruption was blamed on connectivity problems at AWS, which announced that the issue had been resolved shortly after 9am ET, although the company first acknowledged the problem at 4:40am PDT (7:40am ET), and the failure affected multiple AWS services in its US-West-2 region in Oregon. AWS provides the computing power and online infrastructure used by countless websites, apps, and businesses, meaning a regional failure can disrupt numerous seemingly unrelated services simultaneously.

Impact on Users and Businesses

Users reported frustrations during the disruption, with one writing, "AWS is down and is literally breaking the internet. Please hang on," and another posting, "This is not a drill, AWS in us-west-2 is offline for everyone." Companies using AWS posted apologies on X while their websites were unavailable, with one stating, "There is a massive AWS outage in America which is causing interruptions."

PlayStation users were among those reporting problems, with one player claiming they had been abruptly kicked out of a game on Friday morning, and another X user shared, "Anyone else's PlayStation connection down just tried to start a stream and I can't play the game." The outage ultimately affected seven services, including AWS Direct Connect, Global Accelerator, Internet Connectivity, IoT Core, Amazon API Gateway, Elastic Compute Cloud, and Elastic Container Service.

What Happens Next

As the cloud outage has been resolved, users can expect services to return to normal, and AWS will likely conduct an investigation into the cause of the disruption, which may provide more insight into what happened, and how the company plans to prevent similar outages in the future. In the meantime, users can monitor AWS's status page for updates on any ongoing issues, and businesses can review their disaster recovery plans to ensure they are prepared for any future disruptions.

  • 30 percent of users reported problems with AWS, citing issues involving Amazon EC2
  • 29 percent reported problems with AWS's US-West-2 region in Oregon
  • 23 percent cited issues involving US-East-1, the company's Northern Virginia region